


Constellations

by jeffcatson



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos is a great big science hippy, Established Relationship, Fluff, Gen, M/M, existential non-angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 06:09:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffcatson/pseuds/jeffcatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos is rooted in and grounded by science, and Cecil's bleak existential monologues are perfect. Some backstory, some of Cecil and Carlos doing science in Night Vale, some fluff.</p><p>"There are some days when the numbers don't work, whichever way Carlos rearranges them, however many hours he spends tugging on his hair and sighing, exasperated, over the computers. On those days, he sometimes leaves the lab, gets into his car, and drives to the ocean."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Constellations

 

1\. Ocean

  
  
There are some days when the numbers don't work, whichever way Carlos rearranges them, however many hours he spends tugging on his hair and sighing, exasperated, over the computers. On those days, he sometimes leaves the lab, gets into his car, and drives to the ocean.  
  
There, the waves wash over his feet and send a chill upwards, and he walks in slowly, talking himself through getting in further, further. Knees, thighs, hips, and now the water's washing around his belly, slapping its way up his back and over his shoulders. His legs are used to it, now, but he still gasps as a cold splash hits his chest, carries on working up the courage to breathe, put his hands together and just dive in. More waves, big ones occasionally, there's spray coming up into his face, it's noisy, they're crashing everywhere, there's a huge one coming up towards him and he inhales and quickly counts _one, two_ and dives right into the centre of it and then everything is darkness and silence, the wave passing above his head as he finds the sandy bottom with his hands and swims.  
  
Up, and there's noise and the wind cold on his face, he wipes his eyes and all he can see is dark grey ocean, waves rising up all around him. It's now warmer under the water than outside, and he dives down again, feeling waves wash past him. Surfaces, puts weight onto his toes, licking salt from his lips and blinking his eyes open again. The next wave pounds into him, knocking the air from his body and sweeping him sideways, and he struggles upright again. He launches himself towards shore with the next wave, it carries him in the foam and, eyes closed, he has no idea how far they go. Gets to his feet, makes his way back into the sea, deeper, to where the waves break and he can catch another one, and another. He's pummelled, they explode against his back and shoulders and carry him over and and over, and there's nothing in the whole world but the salt water, the waves, his exhausted muscles and gasping breaths.  
  
When he returns to the lab, the numbers still don't add up, but now he has the taste of salt on his tongue.  
  
His first tattoo is of the ocean: swirling waves tipped with foam inked in a rich, dark brown across his right hip. Over a decade later, Cecil will unwrap him and let out a delighted squeak to find it.  
  
He finishes his PhD and takes a teaching position alongside the lab work. These days, the city feels crowded and oppressive. It's too hot, the buildings too close, and he finds himself wanting to drive out to find big open spaces more and more. He's busy, but finds time to walk on the wind-swept beach or drive through the forests outside the city. When a position comes up researching odd goings-on in a little desert town surrounded by miles of brush and empty roads, he takes it immediately.

 

2\. Constellations

_"We are merely tiny, fragile sacks of water and flesh and finely balanced electrical signals, hurtling through an unforgiving universe and consistently at the mercy of the pitiless void. It is only a matter of minute odds that we have not yet been obliterated by a chance passing asteroid, and we must live with the knowledge that our entire world could be wiped out at any time. With that knowledge, is it any wonder that we cling so desperately to random, fleeting moments of human contact and warmth, and that we put so much weight and energy behind small interactions, as though to imbue these with meaning can help keep the certainly of our being alone and helpless in a meaningless universe at bay? That, I cannot answer for you. However, I would just like to share the most adorable video that my Carlos showed me this morning - this kitten loves that severed eyeball it found so very much! Have a look at the Night Vale Radio Facebook page, and to share that, or anything else, just stand on your front porch, hold your laptop up to the sky, and howl. Perhaps that will help."_

 

Carlos drives them both far out into the sand wastes to chart the stars. Earlier, as an afterthought, he had thrown some blankets and a thermos of hot, sweet coffee on top of the telescopes, maps and calculators already littering the back seat. Now, as he carefully angles one and then another telescope towards the full, bright sky, he feels Cecil move behind him, wrap his arms around his shoulders like a scarf. "Lie down with me?", he offers, softly, and they spread out together, ants under an immense dome of light. Hands behind his head, Carlos tries to explain. 

"I like how you talk about space on your show. You know, though, I don't quite see it as being empty. Or quite as the void, at least in the vast and unforgiving way that you talk about. Just, you see how many there are, and how there are more appearing all the time as our eyes adjust? And if you think about, like, how long it must have taken for the light to get here, how many of these may be gone already and how there are new worlds appearing and dying everywhere all the time? It's... it's brilliant, and sure, it's overwhelming and terrifying in its way as well, but mostly, I'm just staggered at the amount of possibility out there. There could be anything. And I'd love it if humans could be a little less self-important as to think our own existence is the most important thing here. You see what I mean?"

Cecil is quiet, thoughtful, for some time. Then, "perhaps that's why the town likes you. Or, one reason. You're... at peace with this, with being small. The danger and that fear that everyone else has over running out of time - you, you know it already. It's not scary in the same way. Is that right?"  
  
Carlos rolls to face his partner. Cecil is gazing at him, head resting on folded arms, tattoos standing out a faintly glowing mauve against bare, dark brown skin. (He could swear he just saw one twitch back into place, but it's hardly the first time he thinks they've moved at the edge of his vision, and that mystery can wait for another day.) "I think there might be another reason the town likes me." A crooked, slightly flirtatious smile. "Don't you?"

Cecil breaks into a small grin, blush showing through a tilt of his head and a slight flutter of his eyelashes, then turns serious. "Well - sure. That - that might also be a thing. Um. But it wouldn't work without - I mean, it's still because of that, too. That, that balance. That knowledge that we're all so insignificant, and yet on our own little scale, vastly important at the same time."  
  
"Is that a pre-requisite of all your dates?" Teasing, now. Cecil grins again, headbutts his chest lightly. They chart stars late into the night, and the constellations are like nothing that Carlos has seen before, though Cecil lists off the names without hesitation and sketches a few figures into the diagrams. The next evening, they come back, and the constellations have moved around ever so slightly - just enough to make Carlos suspect, looking over the charts later, that the stars are slowly acting out some kind of narrative.

They drive back, collapse together into the pile of implausibly brightly-coloured cushions and blankets on Cecil's bed. Carlos lies in his partner's arms, drifts as Cecil tells him some of the old mythologies of Night Vale's stars, wondering (not for the first time) how much of the town runs on telling a story, or how much stories and a flair for the dramatic influence the town's goings-on. He is Cecil, simply Cecil, this evening, but even so Carlos can feel some echo of the Voice rumbling behind his partner's words, infusing all he says with a little extra weight and profundity (including, later, his request for just one more cat video before they sleep.) He'll be there when he wakes: rumpled, sticky, and craving caffeine, it'll be hard to take his doom-laden existential pronouncements too seriously. Carlos smiles, and pulls him closer.

\--

The next time he reports back in Boston, Carlos takes one of the star charts they drew with him and visits his usual tattoo studio. He returns with Night Vale's constellations sprinkled across his shoulders, intermingling with his freckles. Cecil cannot keep his hands off them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm rather new to all this, and all are most welcome to come and huddle on [my Dreamwidth.](http://alreadystardust.dreamwidth.org/)


End file.
